I walked into Yamaguchi's dark and dusty apartment, used to the deserted look. "Pardon the intrusion." I called placing my jacket onto his couch, causing a small cloud of dust to fly up and make me to sneeze. "Wow Yamaguchi..." I sighed. Everywhere in the apartment was dusty apart from his room, the kitchen and bathroom. They were the only rooms he ever used. I walked into the kitchen and looked into his fridge, were there was only fries, milk, some old pasta and surprisingly a strawberry cake. "I don't recall inviting you over."
I closed the fridge door to meet eyes with Yamaguchi. "If I waited around for you to invite me over, I wouldn't have seen you since graduation." I muttered. Yamaguchi was slowly getting worse and worse, and by that I mean he looked like a ghost. He was pale, had bags under his eyes, thinner then a preteen and his hair was longer and messier than usual. I wonder how long it had been since he last went outside. "Wrong. I've invited you over on my birthday every time." smiled Yamaguchi, taking a seat on the stool by the kitchen bench. I smiled back, taking the strawberry cake out of the fridge. "So what, i'd see you once a year?" I asked. "Technically twice, I spend christmas with your family." "Right." I sighed, holding up the strawberry cake. "You did get this for me right?" Yamaguchi nodded, and I begun to cut myself a piece before putting the rest back.
"So how's study?" I asked him, taking a bite of my cake. "Fine. Basically I just have to watch a video everyday and experiment." He explained. "Experiment?" "Yeah, with colors. We're doing contrast at the moment." He said with a bored expression. "I'm sure you'd enjoy it a lot more if you'd just go to the actual university instead of doing an online course." I thought aloud, but Yamaguchi just rolled his dark brown eyes at me. "We've been over this." "Right." I replied. We sat in comfortable silence and I finished the cake, and decided to further question Yamaguchi on his current living routine.
"So do you ever open a window?" I asked him. He smiled at me, looking me up and down. "What?" I asked, blushing at little at his eyes on me. "You look good in a suit. I wish you'd where it more often." He smiled. I did get flustered but quickly moved on, knowing he was probably trying to avoid getting another self care lecture from me. "What time do you usually fall asleep?" I asked. "1 am... sometimes 3 or 4." he admitted, to which I frowned. "And how often have you been outside recently?" I continued to question. "I go out to get food..." he thought. I crossed my arms at him and and he sighed. "I know I know, I'll go for a walk with you on the weekend." I smiled.
Yamaguchi was raised by his grandmother, and just a year after graduation she died. With no family left, he became deeply depressed. I practically had to get him back onto his feet, because he'd never leave his room and wouldn't pay rent or feed himself basic meals. One day after work I walked in on him cutting himself. After that I dedicated all my time to letting him know that he wasn't alone. He'd often come over to my apartment and spend the night, and I'd go to his. We'd spend christmas with my family, spend birthdays together, and constantly text one another. In my mind we were practically dating already, but I guess we still hadn't crossed the line between best friends and lovers. I didn't want to trouble him with my feelings though, he was going through a tough time but was slowly making a recovery. Although he literally didn't have any friends apart from me, he was studying a bachelor of art and was selling his photography and paintings to my uncle's cafe, which had a gallery upstairs. I was proud he was putting in effort to get better, even if it was minimal.
"Tsukki do you want to watch a movie?" he asked. "Only if you've finished study for today." "Yep!" He nodded. We moved to the couch and Yamaguchi begun to flip through netflix. I couldn't care less about what movie we watched, all I could think about right now is if it was ok to offer my shoulder to Yamaguchi's head. We'd cuddled before on the couch, but he always initiated it so I never knew when it was ok. I craved his weight against my body, I wanted to brush my hands through his hair and kiss each of those freckles on his warm cheeks. Those freckles he hated oh so much but I couldn't get enough of. If he knew how much he meant to me maybe he'd appreciate himself a little more.
